Karol Beck

Karol Beck was born April 3rd 1982 in Zvolen, Slovakia and turned professional in 2001. He has been ranked as high as 36th in the world (August 26, 2005).

On February 13th, 2006 the International Tennis Federation (ITF) announced Beck had tested positive for the beta agonist clenbuterol during the 2005 Davis Cup semifinal against Argentina. As a consequence, the ITF suspended him from the game for two years until October 31, 2007. Beck finished serving his suspension and began playing again in November 2007 as an unranked player. He had to go through qualifying rounds in every tournament.

Without a ranking, he had to choose the Tunis challenger as his first tournament to qualify in. He qualified and won his first round match to get his first ranking points. The next week, he had a wild card entry into qualifying for the big Dnepropetrovsk challenger, and qualified to pick up some more points. He qualified a couple more times at challengers and futures tournaments before winning his final tournament of 2007, the Czech F6 Futures, to finish up 2007 at #581 after just 5 tournaments in 6 weeks.